Keeping on Top of the Hill   

Roll Call not only broke the House Bank scandal, it was first to report on the case of the Capitol Hill rat that ate the Xerox machine.

Roll Call reporter Tim Burger knew he had a big story, but he had no idea how big. Like many reporters who cover Capitol Hill, he had been aware for some time that the House Bank provided generous overdraft privileges to House members. But Burger had been following the story more closely than most – his principal beat is the administrative affairs of Congress – and in September it paid off. Informed that the U.S. General Accounting Office, which had criticized the House's banking practices in the past, was releasing a new, detailed report, Burger pounced.

"I noticed that [the report] stated the number of overdrawn checks, which was a first," he remembers. "As soon as I saw that I knew it was an important story for us."

Roll Call carried the story on Page One above the fold on September 19, the national media picked it up and the result was a check-bouncing scandal that threatens scores of congressional careers.

Burger expected other news organizations to be interested in the story, but he was overwhelmed by the response. "As to the incredible scale of the political shock waves, no one could have predicted that," he says. "The shelf life of this story has been amazing. It is just a big mushroom cloud."

Of course, other reporters may well have picked up the story without Roll Call's tip. But major players, including the Washington Post and ABC, have credited the little paper with breaking the story, which speaks volumes not only about who reads it, but also about how one very focused twice-weekly newspaper is changing congressional coverage nationwide.

Roll Call bills itself as Capitol Hill's very own newspaper, and until recently not many people outside Washington had heard of it. For most of its 37-year history, the newspaper was an eight-page gossip sheet, a modest version of People magazine for the Hill. But six years ago the paper changed ownership and immediately underwent changes in format and content. Today, under the stewardship of dapper, well-credentialed editor James Glassman, Roll Call covers Capitol Hill from top to bottom. The newspaper, generally 24 to 32 pages per issue, an issue, still gossips, but it also breaks news. A combination of the offbeat and the mundane, of the flip and the serious, it has reached a balance between substance and entertainment that is making it a favorite read of Washington cognoscenti.

A Force To Be Reckoned With

Roll Call's small circulation, a mere 14,665 according to a recent BPA audit, belies its impressive readership. Among the audience it targets – members of Congress and their staffs – the paper claims a 93 percent market penetration. The figure, based on a poll by the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard, is likely somewhat inflated, but there seems little doubt that Roll Call is widely read on the Hill. And it doesn't stop with Congress. The paper is also read by people in the White House, lobbyists, and others in the ranks of the politically attuned. Paid circulation is about 3,000, according to Glassman.

Capitol Hill reporters read Roll Call religiously. "The piles up here certainly get snapped up very quickly," Adam Clymer, the New York Times' chief congressional correspondent, says of the free stacks delivered around the Hill every Monday and Thursday.

"It is a very good resource," says U.S. News & World Report's Gloria Borger. "It has become something that people who cover the Hill not only must read, but enjoy reading. We've become junkies."

Helen Dewar, who covers the Senate for the Washington Post, says she noticed the turnaround during the last few years. "They started to broaden more then," she says. "It [the paper] has gotten away from silly stuff that it used to do..and does a more detailed accounting of life up here."

David Hess of Knight-Ridder says Roll Call "keeps track of inside baseball stuff like who's working for whom. It does a good job on housekeeping issues, like franking – all of those things that provide an insight into how the Hill works."

Los Angeles Times correspondent Paul Houston came to admire the tenacity of Roll Call while covering the Keating Five hearings. "Even on stories that we know about they manage to do a good job," he says. "Redistricting is a good example, and so is the Alan Cranston ethics case. We were right on top of the story, but so were they. They did a good job of reporting, even breaking new points."

One clear sign of Roll Call's heightened stature in the journalistic community was the decision of New Republic Senior Editor Morton Kondracke, a regular on the "McLaughlin Group" television talkfest, to join the publication half-time as a senior editor and White House columnist. Kondracke readily admits that when Glassman offered him the same job two years ago he turned it down. "It's been recognized as being something different in the last two years," he says. "Glassman has turned that newspaper around. It used to be a tiny little rag and now it is a force to be reckoned with. It is amazing who reads it. I don't consider it a step down at all."

A Shifting Focus

Roll Call was the brainchild of a one-time Capitol Hill press secretary, Sid Yudain, who started publishing it in 1955. For more than 30 years, Yudain, with the help of his sister and two $50-a-week interns, put out an eight-page weekly on a shoestring budget. Yudain, now retired, complains that the current incarnation of his creation is "too serious." He says the original paper "prided itself on being a leader in political satire." (Washington humorist Mark Russell and Landon Parvin, a popular Washington ghostwriter, had internships there.) But satire is a generous way to characterize the old paper. Issues of Roll Call from the early 1970s offered such headlines as "Rep. Renounces Seat for Love" and the popular department "Hill Pin-up Girl of the Week," which typically featured pictures of young female staffers.

Yudain's publication never made much money, but it did establish a hold over a potentially profitable market niche. As Yudain says, he was putting out a "newspaper for the most important community in the world." He never cared much for the business side of publishing and relied heavily on local advertising and some paid subscribers for financing. Nevertheless, national advertisers that recognized the value of targeting members of Congress and their staffs often sent in advertising – unsolicited. It was an untapped market waiting to be exploited.

Glassman became involved in 1986, while acting as a consultant for American Stock Exchange Chairman Arthur Levitt. Glassman encouraged Levitt, who wanted to get into the publishing business, to buy the paper from Yudain for a reported $500,000. Roll Call was hardly a glamorous acquisition, but it appealed to Glassman's venturesome side. A self-described "entrepreneurial journalist," Glassman first made a name for himself in the business when three years out of Harvard he started and edited a witty, successful alternative paper in New Orleans called Figaro. He went on to become executive editor of Washingtonian magazine, publisher of the New Republic, president of the Atlantic and executive vice-president of U.S. News & World Report.

A year after Levitt bought Roll Call, Glassman became editor and began to shape the paper. He understood that Roll Call's hometown flavor had substantial appeal for Capitol Hill readers. Accordingly, a large section of the paper is still devoted to such fare as pictures of watermelon seed-spitting contests, juicy updates on Hill personalities (such as the February appearance of conservative Rep. Phil Crane's three daughters on the risqué TV show "Studs"), and an astonishing array of polls and surveys, determining such ultimates as the best-dressed members of Congress, favorite Capitol Hill restaurants and most respected lawmakers.

Rep. Charles Stenholm, a Texas Democrat, says Roll Call is "turning out to be one of the better publications on the Hill." He can't help adding how pleased he is that the paper recently noted that his daughter was named "outstanding cheerleader at Yorktown High School."

Rep. Andy Jacobs, an Indiana Democrat, says he reads Roll Call for "amusement" but also because "it is the place to go if you want to find out how your friend from North Dakota is doing in the polls."

Roll Call also chronicles life and death in its community. In January Tom Barnes, a 25-year-old aide to Alabama Democratic Sen. Richard Shelby, was shot and killed a block from his Capitol Hill home, for no apparent reason. Roll Call followed the story for two weeks, covered the funeral and gave congressional staffers a forum for sharing grief.

An Eclectic Mix

Glassman, 45, makes a point of writing editorials and appearing frequently on television to defend the institution Roll Call calls its own. "This is a paper that covers Congress as a community, and any time you foresake that you have a problem," he says.

At the same time, Glassman started the blanket coverage of Capitol Hill issues that other papers had neither the time, space nor patience to report. Regular columns keep track of staff changes, redistricting battles and political trends back home in the districts. Charles Cook, whose newsletter on congressional campaigns is a lobbyist's bible, writes a column in Roll Call, "Political Surveyor."

The contents of a January issue reflects the paper's eclectic editorial mix. There were articles on "the horrible smell that wafts onto Capitol Hill with every south wind"; which members of Congress maneuvered to get aisle seats at President Bush's upcoming State of the Union address; why there shouldn't be $6,000 marble floors for elevators in the Capitol (besides the obvious, it hurts the elevator operators to stand on them all day); what's happening in the Illinois redistricting battle; and a proposed plan for an $8 million electronic ID system for House staffers.

Roll Call's editorial staff consists of 13 people. The bulk of the copy is produced by six young reporters, most in their mid-20s, who work long hours and then often socialize together in the evenings (drinking beer and watching "The Simpsons" are favorite activities).

Although Roll Call's reporters have ready access to members of Congress, many of their stories are the product of decidedly unglamorous labor. Reporters call congressional offices to take a poll or to ask for information on junkets. They visit the Federal Election Commission's Public Records Office to trace which members' campaigns House Speaker Thomas Foley is contributing to. They scavenge for obscure memos or reports that illuminate tensions between rival committees.

Relying on legwork instead of high-placed contacts does have pitfalls, however. In February, the paper was caught flatfooted when the Washington Times scooped it on a federal investigation of alleged cocaine trafficking in the House Post Office.

A Great Tip Sheet

Being widely read doesn't necessarily mean being well respected. Roll Call has had only a few investigative coups – it revealed accusations that Rep. Jim Bates, a California Democrat, had been accused of sexually harassing his staff, and that workers in the congressional print shops were being mistreated – and these were several years ago. The paper sometimes tends toward the sensational and the silly. Last November, Roll Call carried a front-page story about a squirrel that had been caught in a rat trap outside the home of Rep. Fortney "Pete" Stark, a California Democrat. The article made much of the fact that the rodent had suffered for several days and implied Stark might be guilty of cruelty to animals. It reported in all seriousness, "As Roll Call went to press Friday, however, no formal charges had been lodged, and it was unclear precisely how long the squirrel had been in the trap."

"It was so melodramatic," says the Washington Post's Dewar. "We got a real chuckle up here [in the press galleries] over that."

Glassman and his staff dismiss charges of sensationalism. They claim their colleagues steal even their silliest stories shamelessly (though this was hardly the case with the squirrel scoop). "The respect is a cumulative thing," Glassman says. "There have been a couple of big stories that had an impact on the institution, but that is not what people read us for. We are extremely well read [by other journalists], mainly because people want to get story ideas."

"The most often heard comment I get from other reporters about us is, 'You're a great tip sheet,' " says Karen Foerstel, who after three yearsis one of Roll Call's senior reporters. "I do a lot of goofy stories that when I am done I say, 'Oh, Lord.' But then it will show up in other papers the next day."

Foerstel's favorite example is the story about the rat who ate a Xerox machine – or, as Foerstel reported in January 1990, ate enough of the innards of the House Legislative Counsel's $93,000 copier that the machine had to be replaced, by one that cost $107,000. The Associated Press picked up the story, and soon afterward Jay Leno was making jokes about the rat in a "Tonight" show monologue.

One unforeseen effect of Roll Call's newfound cachet among reporters has been to facilitate negative Capitol Hill coverage. Its saturation coverage of Hill news provides previously unavailable ammunition for Congress-bashers everywhere. Some of its critics in Congress bitterly accuse the paper of trying to have it both ways. "They pretend to be a Congress booster, then they try and get publicity for themselves by showing us in the worst light," says one Hill staffer.

The recent story on House Bank overdrafts is a perfect illustration. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, had been writing annual reports on the House Bank for years and had documented congressional check-bouncing. In fact, a year before the national press ran with the story, the Washington Post carried a piece on an earlier GAO report on overdrafts at the bank, playing it inside on its federal page. The disclosure caused barely a ripple.

When GAO's 1991 report came out again noting overdrafts, Roll Call led the paper with it. The story mentioned none of the mitigating information surrounding the House Bank's problems, including the fact that the bank wasn't federally insured and that taxpayers wouldn't pay a cent for their lawmakers' overdrawn accounts. In subsequent stories and editorials, Roll Call filled in these details. But the damage had been done. And the sight of Glassman on ABC's "Nightline" in March arguing against punishing the delinquents wasn't much comfort to the representatives.

Don't expect Glassman to apologize. He admits he played both sides of the scandal (he eventually wrote an editorial saying the national press was going too far), but says dual responsibilities to protect and expose are a built-in liability of the job. As for the Roll Call staffers, the experience seems to have made them more cocky than sorry. One reporter said of a senator who was about to be the subject of an unflattering story, "He called me up and warned me, but it was ridiculous. He wouldn't dare not talk to Roll Call."

Susan Glasser, recently named managing editor at age 23, used to be one of the paper's reporters. She says, "I don't think Roll Call is perceived as the threat of the New York Times yet. A lot of time [members of Congress] forget the power we have. But, it is obvious other reporters are reading us."

Anyway, controversy is good for business. Glassman says Roll Call sold 1,142 ad pages last year (as opposed to the 100-plus ad pages per year it sold before 1986) and that national ads continue to roll in. Roll Call appears to be recession-proof. Glassman won't say how much money the paper is making. He told a Washington Times reporter in 1990 that he expected to gross $3 million that year, a figure confirmed by a former ad executive at the paper. Former advertising staffers and competitors estimate the paper makes a healthy profit. Roll Call's editorial staffers, who earn $25,000 and up, also say the financial picture seems bright.

The paper clearly has succeeded by doing the things it does best, yet in one area it seems to be evolving. Glassman stresses that it is not Roll Call's place to provide detailed coverage of policy or legislation like the major dailies. "Our toughest job is resisting the stuff that as an investigative journalist on the Hill you want to cover," he says. But he is ever so slowly and steadily expanding the scope of the paper in this area. Special issues dedicated to in-depth analysis of policy questions have begun to appear. This seems precisely like the material Glassman says he wants to avoid. His rationale? "We tried [the policy briefings] and it worked. I get tremendous feedback from other members of Congress. We justify it as a service to them."

Of course, Roll Call justifies much of its reporting as a service. But members of Congress caught up in the House Bank scandal may be wondering just how much more service they can take. l